Dutch maritime contracting company Van Oord has completed the installation of 62 jacket foundations at the Saint-Brieuc offshore wind farm, 16.3 km off the coast of Brittany, France.
The 496MW Saint-Brieuc offshore wind farm is the first such facility in France with jacket foundations and will generate adequate clean energy for 835,000 people, once operational.
Van Oord has been contracted by Ailes Marines, a subsidiary of Spanish electric utility Iberdrola, for the transport and installation of 62 jacket foundations for the wind turbines and the 4 foundation pin piles for the offshore substation.
The Dutch maritime construction company deployed its offshore installation vessel, Aeolus, to install 190 pin piles and has partnered with other industry partners to install the jackets.
Van Oord project director Ivar Daemen said: “After executing a variety of projects in France, Van Oord reached a huge milestone by completing our very first highly complex offshore wind project here.
“Thanks to the great collaboration between our client Iberdrola, partners and dedicated project team, we have now finished our work on the Saint-Brieuc project. We’re proud to have contributed to France’s energy transition.”
Van Oord said that the conditions for constructing an offshore wind farm project in the Bay of Saint-Brieuc have been challenging, extremely hard and rocky seabed.
To mitigate the environmental conditions that challenged the equipment and expertise Aeolus installation vessel has been upgraded with project-specific installation equipment.
The bottom of the Aeolus vessel’s jacking system has been modified with a flex-pin construction to ensure its safe jacking above sea level.
Also, the company deployed an advanced drilling method to install the foundations, due to the geotechnical conditions at the site.
Van Oord, and its partner Bauer Special Tiefbau, have jointly engineered and constructed the project-specific drills.
A newly designed advanced drilling template served as a positioning and casing drilling tool to facilitate the precise placement of the pin piles, said the Dutch construction company.
